


Stoichiometry

by ziparumpazoo



Category: Fringe
Genre: AU, Friendship, Gen, Red!verse, Speculation, Team, alternate season 3, post-Entrada
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-10
Updated: 2011-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-28 11:03:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziparumpazoo/pseuds/ziparumpazoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's always been part of the plan, after all. A contingency in the event that retrieving the last piece of the device failed. Her mission is to be nothing more than a potential courier now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stoichiometry

**Author's Note:**

> This began as an experiment is writing a serial fic over on FFN, started sometime before AltLiv returned to the other side. Then the show went and jossed everything. I don't mind so much. Their version is much better. This was completed before _Immortality_ aired, but I'm letting it stand as-is with all its errors and assumptions, so consider everything to be an AU of an AU.

__

_Stoichiometry is founded on the law of conservation of mass: the mass of the reactants equals the mass of the products. It's a question of balance.  
_  
*  
Olivia leans her back to the washroom door and hesitates. It's always been part of the plan, after all. A contingency in the event that retrieving the last piece of the device failed. Her mission is to be nothing more than a potential courier now.

At least, that’s what she is meant to believe.

*

When they pull her back, Olivia knows it’s coming, but she’s not prepared. It's a sudden vibration that make her teeth feel like they’re about to shatter. Then a folding crush completely lacking in grace. She doesn't have time to wonder if it's a function of this universe or the other one before she's subjected to the pressure of being tugged and squeezed and threaded through an opening so constrictive she can't find room to breathe.

Opening a rift takes resources. There's significant risk. Somebody must want her back.

Badly.

There's a dark silence when she opens her eyes. Her breath hangs frozen, stalled by her spasming diaphragm and the one-two punch of her extraction. She inhales reflexively, deeply. Gasping like a drowning woman. Everything smells different. Smells right.

Chaos erupts.

Charlie's got her by the arm and is pulling her up off the ground and away, clearing the quarantine area. Voices shout orders, but the words are lost under Charlie's "Come on Liv, feet moving. Let's go, let's go, let's go," mantra hot in her ear.

She looks back once, but the area is already sealed. She knows her team is good, but not this good. Not this fast. They were sent to make sure her arrival didn't tear them all apart.

It’d better be worth it.

*

She stands in front of the glass wall of the Secretary's office watching the zeppelin drift toward its mooring pylon, and considers the things she'd always taken for granted. And the things she's just left behind.

Her palms feel raw, but at least the rods are gone. They told her she won’t even have a scar. She finds that she’s a little disappointed about that.

The Secretary finally arrives to debrief her.

"Agent Dunham." Olivia might have believed the warmth in Secretary Bishop's greeting if she hadn't experienced the genuine article in Walter. “Welcome back.”

She straightens, hands clasped behind her back. "Thank you, sir. It’s good to be home."

He gestures to the pair of chairs and the desk. Outside, the sun marches its way towards horizon and the water blinks its golden waves at her. "Sit, please. I understand it's already been a long day for you." He takes the seat opposite her and opens a file folder. The piece of tape pulls at the skin on her forearm where they took her blood. She tries not to rub at it. The Secretary consults the file, but it's all a show. She wouldn't have a solo audience if she'd failed.

"Excellent work, Agent," he tells her clinically. "You weren't able to bring my son back, but you did manage to salvage the mission, regardless."

Olivia nods. "Thank you, sir." As if seducing Peter was all in a day's work. "So when can we remove it?" She's eager to slip out of that woman’s skin and back into her own life.

"Oh no," he smiles at her, and if he means it to reassure her, she isn’t at all. She can see him calculating, plans shifting. The game changes, yet again. "The blastocyst is far too fragile to be removed just yet. Damaging the cellular structure will make preserving the DNA impossible. For cloning to be successful, we require the source sample to be pristine.” He sits back and folds his hands in front of him neatly. It’s clear there will be no discussion on the matter. “We'll monitor it and wait for the right time."

He watches her, reads her reaction, and doesn’t tell her not to do anything foolish; he doesn’t have to. He’s the Secretary of Defense, after all. A man with more power than the President in all but name, and if he decides that Agent Dunham is no longer an asset to the program, her career will be the least of her worries.

Olivia smiles tightly and just nods again. She is a soldier, after all, and this is just part of the mission.

Damn contingencies.

*  
Frank’s gone, and while that doesn’t surprise her – having him around with the other Olivia living her life would have been tricky; too much risk with wrong questions, the wrong memories – she finds that she misses coming home to his clutter and his warmth. She tries to ignore the evidence that somebody else has been living in her house, trying on her life. She believes in the mission, and this is a small sacrifice.

He calls her once, the day after her return. But of course, to him, she’d never left, so there’s nothing monumental about the call. She tells him she misses him, and it’s true, she has, despite everything she’s done. He asks her how the headaches have been and she lies and tells him they’re better; gone, in fact. She doesn’t wonder what they did to the other woman because she knows what the Secretary is capable of, so she plays along to keep Frank safe.

Somewhere during the call, she must have slipped up though, because three days later, Frank is dead. A particularly virulent strain of smallpox which escaped containment, apparently. Which isn’t right. Frank is always so careful at work.

She feels hollow at the news of his passing. They cremate him and send her the remains, packed in a small wooden box which should have gone to his brother. The warning is clear.

She tells herself that maybe this will be easier with all her ties cut.

*  
Broyles never turns up and Lincoln is called up to oversee the team. He’s a good soldier, a good leader, and a good friend, but when he comes back from one of his many briefings with the Secretary, Olivia catches him looking at her differently. She glances up from her terminal and she’s not sure if it’s pity or disappointment she sees on his now-healed face, before his eyes cut away somewhere else, anywhere but in her direction. All she knows is that she doesn’t get sent out in the field as often since he’s been put in command.

Olivia’s never been fond of desk work; she’s always been the first one to get her hands dirty, and that’s what makes her so good at what she does, but she’s developed a certain appreciation for the patience it requires while she’s been away. She tells herself it’s just another challenge, another test of her abilities, and it’s not long before she starts seeing a pattern in their caseload.

There’s a spike in what Astrid calls ‘disruption events’ just after her return, reverberations from her trans-universe jump. And then a week passes, and the number of events drops. Markedly. Another week and they’re down by half. By the time she’s been three months back from the other side, the number of events has nearly petered out like the farthest ripple from a stone tossed in a pond.

She doesn’t need Astrid to tell her there may be a correlation.

*

“You all right Liv?” Charlie catches her with her head between her knees, trying to ride out a rolling stomach. They’re in the alley outside a crime scene – something as mundane as a shootout between a foot patrol and some guy sticking up a liquor store, and Charlie’s voice is thick with concern. “You catch some nasty-ass super-virus while you were up at the lab?”

“Something like that.” She clears her throat and takes the offered hand. She puts on a smile because this is her Charlie and he deserves at least that much, even if she’s not allowed to tell him the truth.

He pulls a pack of gum from his pocket and passes it to her. “You should get that checked out.”

“Yeah.”She’s at the lab a lot these days, participating in one test, or another. She’d told Charlie it was still part of that special assignment; he doesn’t even know she was gone. The other Olivia was at the lab all the time, too. “I’ll put it on my to-do list.”

“You know, if you need some time, after Frank, and everything- “

“I’ll suck up to the boss.” She flashes him a smile just to show him she’s fine.

“They’re working you too hard these days,” he tells her. Charlie doesn’t know the half of it. He cracks some joke about her gunning for Lincoln’s job as he follows her back to the crime scene.

It’s good to have Charlie back.

*

Most of the time, she thinks of it as ‘The Package’, because that’s what it is, really. She’s just a storage medium until the Secretary decides the time is right. No different than Charlie’s baby arachnids. Except deep down, she knows there’s more to it than that. This is a little more complicated than walking around with a lock of Peter’s hair in her pocket.

She’s running a towel over her damp hair when the Secretary joins them in the lab. The tank experiment was a bust. Again. Brandon is speaking quickly, sharp jerky steps as he flits from monitor to monitor, talking about things like modified brain waves and adjusted chemical composition, things Olivia doesn’t bother to process. His body language tells her more than his words. He’s obsequious. Falling all over himself to explain the experiment’s failure.

Then she knows: he was there when her doppelganger escaped. Olivia files this insight away for later. After all, anybody can be forged into a tool; one just needs the right leverage.

The Secretary is not moved. “No,” he tells Brandon. “Absolutely not. Nothing but the compound in her system. Nothing else.”

Olivia gets the feeling that the game is about to change yet again. She just can’t guess how twisted it’s about to get.

*

There are many unmarked rooms and many locked doors on Liberty Island. Secretary Bishop takes her to the one at the top of a flight of stairs. The few lights mounted in the high ceiling don’t have the power to chase the shadows, but their footsteps echo off the walls, giving her an idea of the vastness of the chamber.

The Secretary leads her down a flight of stairs to the bottom of the well. He flips a switch and more light shines upwards, illuminating the focal point of the room. Before Olivia stands the device, the purpose of her mission to the other side, complete save for the one missing piece she’d stolen and left for retrieval. The piece that now sits in its box on a table beside her.

She watches as the Secretary slides the last component into place and can’t help but feel a shift in the air around her. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stand up and the smell of ozone hits her hard, like in those last few seconds right before lightning strikes. She feels a tug, a stirring from within, and her heart starts to beat faster, her breath comes quicker. The amount of electrical potential in the room is staggering.

She turns to the Secretary, but he’s been watching her the whole time, gauging her. He nods and a cunning smile deepens the creases in his face, until his eyes are hooded, raptor-like in the indirect light. Olivia flinches. It’s involuntary, but she holds her ground.

Another switch is flipped and the machine goes cold as quickly as it had been activated. Her pulse slows too.

“Excellent,” The Secretary says with none of the warmth Walter would have displayed at the success of an experiment. “This has far more potential than I’d expected.” He turns to lead her back up the stairs, but Olivia stands where she is. As the adrenaline ebbs and the sweat dries between her shoulders, she rests one hand on the edge of the table, the other on her stomach; she’s still feeling sucker-punched. A little unbalanced by the whole experience. And then, as her heart rate closes in on normal, she feels it beneath her palm. A quickening; the sensation is so subtle that she’d missed it amongst the sensory overload.

The Secretary turns from the stairs and waits with that self-satisfied curve of a smile for her to follow.

And then she understands; the weapon is complete, save for the stolen piece she still carries.

The mission is far from over.

*  
Olivia is still unsettled as she puts her car in drive. It’s not until she hits I-90 that she realizes where she’s heading. She’s only been to Boston once before, on this side, at least, back when she’d first joined the Fringe Division. Some field-trip to give the recruits a first-hand look at what they were fighting. Even in the evening’s waning light, the destruction on either side of the interstate is such a stark contrast from the flourishing countryside she remembers from only months ago that she has to blink once, twice, to clear her vision. Olivia keeps her eyes on the road after that.

Traffic thins as she puts some distance between herself and the city, and by the time she hits Newton, she’s been the only car on the road for the better part of two hours. As she drives, one hand keeps slipping down to rest on that spot where she’d felt it, waiting for proof that her imagination hadn’t been playing tricks under duress. But figment, or not, the drive is quiet.

She’s still not sure what she expects to find in Boston.

*

The doors to the Kresge Building stand open, hinges twisted, wood scorched. Fairly recent damage too, from the looks of it. The door to the lab is in better shape, but the glass, what’s still left in the frame, is a spider web of cracks and holes.

Olivia stops at the top of the stairs, and for a moment, by virtue of the faint light spilling through the high windows and masks the clutter, she could be in Walter’s lab with all its warmth and eccentricities. She catches herself looking over her shoulder, but there is no long-suffering cow watching her patiently as it chews its cud.

She switches on her flashlight as she turns back to the lab area and sees the destruction clearly now. Empty salt bags and deflated hoses are scattered amongst the bits and pieces of broken machinery and glass. There’s a fair amount of blood on the ground over by the bullet-dinted monstrosity of a deprivation tank. She shines her light along the floor, searching for the evidence that will tell her what went on here. There’s a ball cap on the ground, the gold stitching of the Fringe Division logo catching the light. She doesn’t need to get any closer to guess who it belonged to. She can guess what happened to Broyles now.

Olivia sits down on the top step, clicks off the light, and rests her elbows on her knees, her chin on her folded fingers; going any further feels like a desecration to his memory. She’d always liked Broyles, respected him, and not just in her universe.

She has never doubted her commitment before, has always held fast to her certainty in their purpose to defend and protect their universe. She’s never had reason to question her orders, but if Broyles has been here, and supposedly helped their Olivia escape (for she knew the Secretary would not be this desperate if he still had her in custody), then maybe there was something larger at play? She has lived amongst those people, those so-called monsters, and save for a small handful of people in know, most of the population doesn’t have a clue that they are in danger. Their biggest crime is their ignorance of what has been done to her universe by a grieving father for the sake of his young son.

In the darkness, she feels those soft brushstrokes again, low in her belly, and this time they don’t fade away as her fingertips find them. She breathes slow and shallow; she’s afraid that any sudden movement will shatter the illusion. But as the minutes tick on and the tappity-tap-tap tap remains strong, her doubts fall away. Her purpose has not changed. She still has a universe to save. She’s just no longer certain that destroying the other side is the way to do it though.

The question is, how is she going to do it? She has choices; a woman always does, despite the missives of church and state. She could take away the missing piece of the device. Destroy it irreparably. A call to Emergency Services followed by an accidental weapon’s discharge or a fall onto a shard of glass. Give them enough lead-time and she’d probably survive.

There would be questions, of course, but there’d only be enough evidence for speculation. About as much evidence as there was in Frank’s death. Her stomach turns at the though. There are still people here that she loves. People they can use against her.

Then, she remembers Peter’s words as she’d tested his principles over a cup of coffee: “I’ve got to believe there’s another way.”

Olivia pushes to her feet and switches the flashlight back on.

She needs to find that other way.

On the drive back, she lets her eyes wander from the road once in a while. The blighted remains of the forest on either side only strengthen her resolve.

*

The first thing she needs to do, Olivia decides, is gather intel. No different than working any other case, but flying under the Secretary’s radar means her resources are going to be a lot more limited. She’s got time, but it’s slipping fast.

She books a couple of days of vacation and tells Charlie she’s fine; she just hasn’t been sleeping well (it’s the truth) and she needs time after everything that’s happened. She knows he’s probably already got a theory; all the changes to her body are hard to miss, but with Lincoln being in the big chair now and the team all but disbanded, she worries about losing him. He’s been one step away from throwing in the towel for a while now, but she still trusts him, and she needs him watching her back more than ever.

She felt his absence on the other side, his loss in the other Olivia’s life so abrupt, told only by the sudden holes in her case files. She’s afraid to lose his friendship over here. So she takes her vacation days and promises to call Charlie, maybe meet him for supper or something, just so he can see for himself that she’s alright. And in the mean time, she uses her time away from the office to do a little research into the device on her own.

Apparently, there’s a Markham’s Used Books on this side too. And where there is a particular bookstore full of rare books, in a universe that also contains several pieces of the device in question, logic follows that there will also be a copy of the text she’s looking for that will shed some light onto the whole equation. Olivia doesn’t have Peter’s silver-tongue to sweet-talk Markham into finding what she’s looking for, but a shirt button or two less is just as convincing. She leaves the shop, book in hand, and with a clear sense of direction for the first time since her return.

*

Of all the people she’s close to, all the people she has to lie to, her mother is the most difficult. The woman has already lost one daughter and grandchild. Olivia is afraid to put her through that again.

Olivia’s not expecting the visit; she didn’t know about her mother’s return. Faulty intel, or else proof that her cover was absolute; even Charlie doesn’t know she’d been swapped, after all. Either way, she’s unprepared when she answers the door.

Marilyn blusters into the apartment with words about missing another lunch date, and stops short, staring, as her daughter closes the door behind her.

“Oh,” is all her mother says upon witnessing Olivia’s newfound curves. “Oh Olive.” There is no joy, no excitement in her eyes. All Olivia sees is the fear, and there’s not a damned things she can say – is allowed to say- that will reassure her.

“Mom?” she says, sounding both too chipper and false to her own ears. “Hey. I forgot we had a thing.”

But her mother isn’t easily distracted. “Why didn’t you say anything?”She stands at an arm’s length, a little cautious space between them. “Did this have anything to do with your break? When you showed up at the house… ” And that way leads to the safest excuse.

Olivia takes a step forward. “I couldn’t tell you anything then.” A lie of omission, but a lie, nonetheless. The words taste sour on her tongue.

Another step forward and her mother is holding her tightly. Marilyn strokes Olivia’s hair, tucks a strand back behind her ear as if she were still a small girl, and Olivia feels her breath hitch, just once. As she pulls away, she sees the sadness her mother usually keeps so well hidden, and she wants, more than anything at that moment, to tell her that it’s okay, that there is a place where Rachel lived and where there’s a beautiful little girl who brings happiness to everyone she meets. She wants to assure her mother that this isn’t going to end like her sister, with Marilyn burying a daughter next to a child with no name, but that’s a promise Olivia has little hope of keeping.

Marilyn holds her at arm’s length again, this time with a sad smile as she looks Olivia over. “Did Frank know?”

Olivia doesn’t have to force the tears which sting her eyes. She shakes her head no. At least that much is true. Her mother pulls her close again and whispers, “Oh Olive.”

For the first time, Olivia regrets her success.

*  
Olivia actually finds her time off to be productive for the most part; she’s catches up on the sleep that’s been harder and harder to come by, and she finally takes the time to sort through Frank’s stuff. She fills a box to ship to his brother with things his family will want to hold on to. Mementos like his diplomas, a handful of photos, the cufflinks he inherited from his grandfather… Three years together and there are so many parts of their lives intertwined that she has to stop and think about what’s his and what can still be hers. She finds herself biting hard on her lip to keep from crying at the thought of giving some of this stuff away, but the last thing she needs is one of his family showing up on her doorstep and asking question about custody.

She breaks down one night as she’s drawing the water for a bath. She’s pulling her hair into a ponytail when she catches site of the back of her neck in the mirror. She’d almost forgotten about the missing tattoo. The bathwater is cold by the time the tears are done. She feels empty, like she’s been husked clean. Too exhausted to wait for the tub to fill again, she pulls the plug and spends the dark hours until morning hiding from the tiny part of herself that wishes this kid really were Frank’s. She wouldn’t have to be giving all these pieces of life away.

She stays home most of the time. She can’t shake the feeling that she’s being watched wherever she goes, but whenever she looks over her shoulder she doesn’t see anything out of place. She nixes her plans for another trip to Boston so she can look around the lab in the daytime. For now, having the book is enough of a risk.

*  
“Nothing,” she reports as she pushes strands of wet hair from her eyes. “Same as last time. And the time before that. And the time before that.” She hangs on to the edge of the tank and waits for Brandon to give her a hand out. She’s annoyed that her body is betraying her. Abdominal muscles she’d spent hours at the gym refining seem to have abandoned her overnight. It frustrates her that she’s still being called up to the lab to run through these pointless experiments week after week, and now her body doesn’t even allow her the dignity of a graceful exit from the tank.

Olivia heaves herself up on the tank edge anyhow, and bites back a few choice words she learned in Basic Training when she slips, only because the Secretary is there watching today. She wraps herself in a towel before Brandon reaches the top of the steps and she scowls at him. It’s Secretary Bishop who is making her skin crawl as he scrutinizes her body through the clinging wet gown like he’s measuring growth in a corn field and trying to decide exactly what day it will be ripe to harvest. Brandon just happens to be an easy target.

She turns to the Secretary. “How much longer are we going to do this?”

The Secretary smiles that tight little smile, the one she figures is meant to reassure, but which only makes her feel like he’s deciding how to reword his answer so as not to confuse her tiny mind. “We can postpone the experiments. Brandon might be correct in assuming that chemical stimulation is required to trigger a crossing over.”

It isn’t exactly the answer she was looking for. She pulls the towel tighter around her shoulders as she walks past him to the changing area and feels the weight of his eyes on her again.

“Move the schedule back,” she hears him tell Brandon. “We can afford another eighteen weeks until she has delivered.” The clinical dryness of his voice makes her stomach clench.

*

She’s read the manuscript from cover to cover. She only understands a fraction of the treatise; most of it either over her head, or indecipherable without the proper context. It’s what she discovers tucked inside, coupled with the knowledge of what the Secretary’s been working on that sickens her.

Oh maybe it hadn’t bothered her much a few months back when she’d first skimmed the book, back when the whole idea of defeating The Other Side had been some nebulous and idealistic ambition. Just a series of objectives to be met for the mission to be considered a success and she, Olivia, could return with another notch in her belt and a commendation for a job well done.

It was easy to maintain her professional detachment when it was just a mission.

She finds the sheet of paper, discolored and oddly sized, as if it weren’t meant to be part of this particular book or perhaps slipped in as an afterthought when it falls into her lap. As if she were meant to find it.

Peter had referenced the picture, once or twice, but she’d never seen the actual page. On the top half, the device, recognizable as the monstrosity on Liberty Island, and on the bottom half of the page, true to his description, Peter himself, complete with flames.

She flips the sheet over so she doesn’t have to see Peter burning in front of her. The baby shifts within her, as if to remind her why she’s even searching for the truth in the first place. And yes, she has been thinking of it as ‘the baby’ now, and no longer ‘the package’. Her interactions with her friends and family leave her no choice; she can’t afford to slip up. But always Peter’s baby, never hers. She needs to stay objective.

Peter. That’s what this whole war has always been about, anyhow.

Olivia flips the page back over and the baby shifts again. It’s grown enough that she can see where her skin ripples as it twists and turns itself until it’s apparently comfortable enough to still again. She tries not to notice that her palm has come to rest over the spot where she felt it move.

It’s easy to mistake the burning man for Peter at first glance. The likeness is remarkable, after all. But it has always struck her, right from their very first meeting in the Secretary’s office, how much Peter takes after his father. They have the same strong chin, the same sharply receding hairline (no matter how much Peter musses his forward to hide the fact), the same crease between the eyes when they’re both angry. Like father, like son. She idly rubs at the foot pushing against the heel of her hand and wonders if madness is also genetic.

She sits up straighter and runs her finger along the lines of code on either side of the picture. Genetics, or more specifically, a particular subset of DNA. This is what the Secretary was after. This is what he’d sent her to retrieve, except in his single-minded obsession with revenge, he’d missed one crucial element – he already had all the DNA he needed. Forty-six chromosomes, twenty-three of those he’d passed on to Peter, which she had then stolen some combination thereof. (Brandon, when properly motivated, could be a wealth of information.) She remembered the flurry of activity she’d felt when the Secretary had activated the device for the barest of moments. If the child she carried could affect and be affected by the device, did it not follow that so could Walter Bishop?

Unless he already knew this.

In which case, was his plan to spite the son who turned his back on his father? There had to be a Greek tragedy or two in there somewhere.

Olivia sets the book aside and paces the small apartment. How she wishes she had access to Peter and his genius right about now. She was starting to feel completely out of her league, and she misses the way it was always so easy with him. She misses the certainty that all she’d have to do is look over in his direction and know that he’d been waiting for her to ask, to let him voice to his suspicions and to use his wellspring of knowledge to straighten her on her path. They fit together well.

Yes, she decides as the baby shifts and pokes yet again, she understands why her counterpart had crossed universes for him.

*

“Y’know Liv,” Charlie tells her one evening as they’re walking back from supper. “This kid of yours is going to need some sort of father figure in his life.” Olivia cuts a glance his way to see him watching her with that expectant Charlie-grin, the one that says he’s setting her up because he’s got the perfect punch line he’s been saving up. “Somebody who’s going to look out for him, you know? Keep him out of trouble.”

“Awe Charlie, are you proposing?” She catches the flush that creeps up from his collar.

“Naw, Liv,” he says. “I was just going to tell you that I have the numbers for a couple of good boot camps.”

She bumps shoulders with him. “Funny.”

“What? That’s all?”

Olivia looks over her shoulder and shrugs.

Charlie throws an arm over her shoulder. “Hey, what’s up? I can tell when something’s on your mind.” He gives her a light squeeze and it feels good to know that just because they’re not on a case, he’s still looking out for her. “Look, I know it’s tough with Frank gone and all, but you know I’m here for you, right?“

“It’s not Frank’s,” she blurts, then checks that nobody else on the sidewalk is close enough to have heard. She nudges at Charlie to keep him walking. She shouldn’t be dragging him into this, but there’s no one else she trusts more, and like it or not, she’s going to need help.

*  
“You know how this sounds, right?” Charlie would be pacing if they weren’t out in public. Olivia’s not entirely sure her apartment isn’t bugged, so they’d kept walking until she’d finally had to ask him to stop. She sits on a bench by the pond wishing that she’d worn better shoes, while Charlie stands with his hands on his hips, chin tucked while he processes everything she just told him. “He just ordered you to go over there and sleep with the guy, just part of the job, and meanwhile we don’t even know you’re gone?”

Charlie’s old-fashioned. He believes in chivalry. He used to hold the door for her all the time back when they were first partnered, until she gave him so much gruff for it that he finally backed off. He’d tried to save face and claimed his mama raised him better, but his dad had told him that the woman was always right. Olivia remembers ribbing him for that too, but she also knew he did it because even after only working together for a short time, he respected her ability to get the job done. She can tell he’s having a hard time with the idea of the Secretary using her like that, but even more so with the fact that she’d let herself be used.

“I was ordered to retrieve several pieces of a device. Some piece of ancient technology the Secretary said was hidden on the other side. There was a box, buried in some family’s basement. Other pieces scattered all over the planet,” she tells him. He’s still watching her though, waiting for her to tell him how the kid fits into the plan. She takes a deep breath. “He also needed a sample of genetic material from Peter.”

“There’s other ways of getting that Liv.”

“Not too many ways of getting it back safely. Do you know how they brought me back here Charlie?” she asks because he’s clearly been in the dark so long he doesn’t want to see. “A guy shot metal rods into my hands and my back in some train station washroom. He killed a woman who walked in on us to keep her quiet. Just some random woman who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She closes her eyes for a moment. “Her daughter was there. She watched Peter shoot the woman in the head, only the kid didn’t know her mother was already dead.”

“Liv- “

“He’s using shapeshifters. It wasn’t really the woman Peter shot, but the girl didn’t know that. Charlie, you should’ve seen her face.” She remembers how it felt as the bullet hit and the body jerked under her arm, but mostly she remembers the girl’s face as she realized her world was about to come crashing down. Her stomach churns and she has to lean forward with her head between her knees until it passes.

“Shapeshifters are supposed to be theoretical. The technology was flawed,” Charlie says. It’s a mild evening and there are other people in the park. He keeps his voice low, but his face is tight with disbelief.

Olivia shakes her head. “They’re real Charlie, and he’s got them embedded all over the place there.”

“Jesus,” he breathes.

“Yeah.”

He turns to her. “So you didn’t beat us to that to that field.”

“You guys were the retrieval party.” She can tell it’s all starting to fall into place for him. A lot of lives had been put at risk that day to get her back.

“And Broyles?”

“Dead is my guess.” She tells him about the lab in Boston. “I think he figured out what was going on and helped her escape.”

Charlie’s clearly upset. He’s pacing now. She’s just tilted his whole perception of this supposed war and he’s trying to find his footing again. Olivia looks over her shoulder, trying to see a recognizable face in the crowd; she can’t shake that feeling that she’s being watched again. There’s nothing but the usual evening comings and goings.

“I wasn’t supposed to get pregnant. That wasn’t part of the plan.” She gives him a minute to process. “I was just supposed to be a courier. The Secretary had other ideas and there’s no way I could refuse. Frank was a warning not to try.”

Charlie turns away from her and stands with his hands on his hips, and she can’t help but feel stung by his disappointment. He’d been genuinely happy for her when he’d found out, and now she’s let him down somehow.

“It burns whoever uses it. From the inside out Charlie.” She waits until a group of camera-toting tourists pass. It gives her a second to lower her voice and take back a little bit of control. She really shouldn’t be so invested in this, but her objectivity is slipping week by week. “He’s not going to fix the rifts with the device. He’s going to use this kid as a weapon.”

That gets him. “Liv… “ But he’s got nothing. He finally takes a seat beside where she’s leaning forward with her elbows on her knees to keep herself from shaking. It sounds so much worse now that she’s said it out loud.

“He’s going to use a child as a weapon Charlie,” her voice breaks. She looks at him over her shoulder. “If that’s what we’ve sunk to, I don’t know if this world is worth saving.”

Charlie touches her shoulder. She leans into him a bit. It feels good, not so lonely. They sit and watch the people pass by. Kids on bikes, parents with children and little dogs in tow, regular people. Innocent people whose only crime is hoping and praying that their world doesn’t disappear into the unknown.

“No,” Charlie finally says. He rubs her shoulder absently. “No, I don’t believe that Liv. There’s got to be another way.”

“That’s what Peter said.”

“ Then we’re just going to have to find it.”

*  
It occurs to Olivia that until further notice, she has complete control of the child, possession being nine tenths, and all. The Secretary can’t use it if he doesn’t have it, though as the days tick by, he’s inching closer to his ultimate goal.

Work is quiet. Very quiet. Fringe Division hasn’t been out on a first response in months now; the call only comes in when they’re needed for cleanup. Olivia still gets out in the field, though never without a chaperone. Sometimes it’s Charlie, sometimes it’s Lincoln who comes along. He tells her he misses fieldwork and needs to stretch his legs. She doesn’t have to wonder where the order came from.

“You know, sometimes I wonder,” Lincoln tells her as he moves through the kid’s bedroom, “if this whole ‘Peter Bishop Act’ isn’t a waste of time.”

He’s watching her closely. “Oh?” she answers as she flips back the butterfly printed comforter and nudges a few stuffed bears around. The crime scene unit has already been through here and done their thing. No unexpected prints, no forced entry, no anomalous readings. She and Lincoln are pretty much just a formality.

“I’m willing to bet you dinner that this is a case of a custody dispute going sideways. Mom’s pissed that Dad got visitation rights, grabbed the kid and ran.” There’s a tech in the room with them photographing the closet, and a uniform right out in the hall, but Lincoln’s still watching Olivia and gauging her reaction. “I mean, really, when was the last time you ever heard of someone from another universe stealing a kid? You know how much work that would involve?”

She wants to shake her head and him. He’s always been ballsy. “I wouldn’t have a clue,” she says instead, biting her cheek to keep a straight face. “Seen Charlie lately?” she asks lightly.

“I had drinks with him the other night,” Lincoln says and Olivia lets her shoulders relax a bit. “You should’ve come.”

Olivia shrugs and gives him a smile. Things are okay between them. “I’m not that much fun at a bar lately.”

“Yeah, but we could’ve used a ride home.” The show is for the benefit of the tech and the officer in the hall. Public deniability. Truthfully, Olivia’s relieved that things haven’t changed as much as she’d thought. Different assignments, but the team remained the same.

Lincoln waves the scanner again for show. “I’ve got nothing here. No visitors from a parallel universe.” He winks at Olivia as he wanders out to the hall.

She follows him. Lincoln always was the brains behind the team.

*  
Brandon likes to talk. He likes to play the showman. Olivia uses this to her benefit. She peppers him with questions about cloning and genetics, and then lets him roll.

“So,” she asks one day as Brandon fastens a blood pressure cuff around her arm. She shifts as if sitting on the edge of the table is uncomfortable and rubs at her lower back with her free hand, but it’s all part of this chatty buddy-act she’s going for. “I guess it’s pretty lucky that you were able to bring me back. I mean, I can’t imagine doing all this,” she tilts her head to mean the lab, “over there on the other side.”

Brandon fusses with the cuff. “Actually, it would have been catastrophic,” he says as if the apocalypse is the most natural topic of conversation for a pre-natal checkup.

“They didn’t seem that far behind us technologically,” she frowns.

“Oh no, that’s not it at all.” He pauses to enter some figures on his data pad. “It’s the whole exchange of matter that’s the problem. Lie back please?”

Olivia does. She’s not sure which is worse – constant submersion in the tank, or this endless prodding and monitoring. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you know that our universe and the other one are slightly out of sync, right?”

She nods. It was the topic of a previous appointment.

“Right, so we know they’re out of sync because the atoms that make up the objects from our universe vibrate at a slightly different frequency than the atoms over there.” He’s watching Olivia now like a kid showing off a newly learned magic trick and he’s practically bouncing with excitement for the big reveal. She nods to encourage him.

“And we can measure that frequency, and from there we can tell which atoms originate from over here, and which ones from over there. Actually, the universes keep track. Matter is finite. There are only so many atoms allowed on either side. The matter that makes up your body belongs over here. Same with the matter that makes up the father’s. Therefore, Junior here,” he taps at her stomach, “belongs in our universe.” Olivia clenches her hands by her sides to keep from breaking his finger.

She smiles tightly at him. “So it’s all about balance.”

“Oh yeah. With the two of you over there, and nothing sent back in return…” he trails off, lost in thought.

“What?” she prods him.

“Nothing.”He shrugs. “Just that as the baby grows he consumes elements from whichever universe he happens to be in. Food, oxygen, minerals… the building blocks of the human body. The bigger he gets, the more he becomes part of that universe. Because the universe becomes part of him.” He puts his data pad aside. “Anyhow. That’s it for today.”

She leaves him with an absent ‘see you next week’ as she considers the implications of this new information. Peter crossed over as a child of maybe sixty or seventy pounds, almost half his current weight, but now as a grown man, he doesn’t truly belong in one universe or the other anymore. He’s irrevocably anchored to both worlds like some constant in an un-factorable polynomial, and it’s pulling them apart.

Olivia’s looked at the statistics; she knows that disruption events have dropped since her return. She’s seen how their impact has become less and less as the months pass.

She wonders if this child is bringing balance to that equation.

*  
She mentions it to the Secretary. Throws it out there casually in conversation. As casual as any visit to Secretary Bishop’s office can be.

The invitations always carry the undertone of a summons; there’s often a car waiting for her outside the Federal building to escort her. Afternoon tea with a view of the harbor and pointed questions about how she’s feeling. Is she getting enough rest, working too hard? He watches her with polite interest today as she sips the strong tea and assures him that yes, she’s fine, the baby’s fine, no Lincoln is going easy on her. They dance the dance, though for who’s benefit, she’s not sure. She’s witnessed Walter’s volatility; the Secretary has the potential in him. Culture, and the office he holds force him to keep it in check.

Most days she skirts around the mission, keeps it light, never asks about a timeline.

Most days she feels like a rabbit in a snare.

Today he ponders the question carefully. He gives her the same consideration as any of his other scientists. This is new.

“Olivia,” he finally says, and if she’s surprised that he no longer addresses her as ‘Agent Dunham’, she doesn’t let it show. “While the theory is sound, there is only so much matter that can be stored by the human body in the short time you were over there.”

It’s what she was afraid of. She’d freely admit that she’d indulged while on the other side. Things like fresh fruits and vegetables. Ice cream was a difficult one to deny herself once Walter recruited her as his partner in crime in the pursuit of the perfect sundae and the ideal pastry. Coffee. Calories. Tiny units of matter and energy brought back and now being used up by the gestating child. Like a polar bear in the last days of hibernation, she has a finite reserve from the alternate universe. She’s pretty sure she’s almost run out.

“Yeah, but aren’t people like batteries?” she asks since he’s being magnanimous. “Can’t I… I don’t know… recharge somehow?”

“My dear,” the Secretary gives her a tight smile and sets his tea aside. “If only it were that simple.” He gets to his feet and escorts her out, and like that, the visit is over.

Brandon’s waiting on the bench in the reception hall. His turn is called, and as he walks past, he slows long enough to whisper, “You’re not going to change his mind. He’s already got other plans.”

Olivia pretends she doesn’t hear.

*  
She’s sitting on the patio of the café waiting for her mother when she feels that itch again; that feeling that somebody is watching her. She turns quickly, and this time she catches him. The bald man. The one Peter once called The Observer.

He knows he’s been spotted. His mouth makes a silent ‘oh’ as he hesitates, but there’s no crowd around this time for him to blend into. Olivia kicks the chair beside her out and nods an invitation. The man’s eyes dart left, right, and then he tilts his head and seems to make a decision. He folds himself stiffly into the chair and waits.

“It was you,” she states. “You’re the one who’s been following me, aren’t you?”

The man tilts his head like she’s speaking a foreign language. “Why are you here?” she pushes.

“I have been watching you,” he finally says. His voice isn’t what she expected. The words make sense but the cadence is all wrong. Olivia looks over her shoulder. Marilyn is running late and nobody else in the crowded cafe is paying them any attention.

“Why?” And because she has to know, “You work for the Secretary?”

The man shakes his head. It’s a subtle motion, easily dismissed, and yet she has the feeling she’s just insulted him. “The boy is important,” he says in a monotone.

“What do you mean, ‘important’?” She wants to reach across the table and grab him by those smart lapels. She clenches her fist in her lap instead. Getting kicked out of the restaurant will not get her answers.

“He is in danger. He must be protected.”

“Olivia.”

She hears Marilyn call from behind her. She turns at the distraction. “Protected from who?” dies on her lips as she turns back.

The man has vanished.

*

And like an over-wound watch spring straining against its stored potential energy, there comes a moment when the ratchet is not strong enough to hold everything in check.

The spring unwinds. Nature requires balance. Sometimes, explosively.

*

The first breach is massive. Not on scale with the first event - the Charles River - but a hell of a lot bigger than anything they’ve seen in a long time. They amber most of the Bronx.

People lose confidence in the government’s ability to handle the situation and start fleeing the city. The talking heads on TV are speculating about End Times.

Olivia dreams about a dark-haired little boy walking down a path with her under a bruised sky. His hand is impossibly small and fragile in hers. When they get to the end of the road, he easily slips free, turns to her all huge-eyed innocence, then steps over a concrete berm and saunters off down a four-lane ribbon of concrete. He doesn’t look back as the ground crumbles and the trees wither behind him. She wakes up in a cold sweat with her hand against her stomach. For a few heart-pounding moments she pokes and taps until she rouses the baby enough that he gives her an annoyed shove and settles himself again.

She lets out the breath she’d been holding. Curled up on her sides, she rubs slow circles over where what she thinks might be his pointy little shoulder is wedged down near her hip. He doesn’t move as much these days, space being at a premium and all. Not long to go, she thinks, and wonders what kind of life she’s going to be able to give him.

The ground shakes. She can hear plates rattling in the kitchen, but by the time she untangles herself from her sheets, everything is still again, except for the wail of car alarms in the street.

She calls Charlie. He answers on the second ring. “’Lo?” His voice is thick and it’s only then that Olivia checks the clock.

“Charlie?”

“Liv?” Years of being on-call bring him out of a sound sleep quickly. “Are you okay?”

She hesitates because no, she isn’t really, but it’s not what he thinks. “Yeah… yeah. I’m okay. Fine. Baby’s fine.”

“Liv?”

“Charlie, we gotta do something.” He doesn’t need to ask what she’s talking about.

Communications networks are always monitored. They’re more aware of this than the average citizen. They make plans to meet for breakfast. Charlie says he’ll bring Lincoln.

Olivia doesn’t bother trying to sleep after that. It doesn’t matter what the Secretary has been planning for the child; it won’t do any good if there isn’t a world left for him to be born to.

She flips on every light in the apartment and sits in front of a muted television with her arms wrapped around the tiny being inside her until the infomercials give way to the morning’s news reports flashing their doomsday headlines.

She tries not to think of the little dark-haired boy in her dream.

*

“There might just be a way to get a message through,” Lincoln tells them.

“How?” she asks between bites of toast. Surprisingly, convincing Lincoln of what she needed to do hadn’t been the hard part. He doesn’t even ask her why, not after he’s had to make the call to quarantine nearly eleven thousand people. If the circles under his eyes were any indication, Olivia would guess he’s taking that decision very personally.

“When I was over there, there was only a single point of communication. They’ve probably found it by now. And anything outgoing on our end is going to be heavily monitored.”

Lincoln looks around. They’ve got the corner booth and it’s early, but he lowers his voice anyhow. “Before he retired from Science Division, my old man was working on something. Used to talk about how it was going to change the way we communicate.”

“You’re dad brought his science projects home?” Charlie says. “That explains so much.”

Lincoln’s not taking the bait. “Not only did he take them home,” he looks between them. “Some of them he kept. Never told anybody at the office about them.”

“They didn’t clean it up when he… ?” Olivia lets the question hang. Lincoln was always close with his father. This was the most he’s spoken about him since his passing.

“Once the Alzheimer’s set in…” he shrugs. Olivia rubs his shoulder. “Let’s just say he lost a lot of credibility towards the end.” He brightens. “But hey, if it’s still there, I can make it work and we’ll see if somebody over there can make a house call."

Charlie shakes his head and looks away. “You know,” he says, then hunches over the table so he can’t be overheard. “You’re both nuts. What if they trace it?”

Olivia sits back. “Then we’re going to have to be very careful about what the message says.”

“Got anything in mind?” Charlie pulls out a pad and waits for somebody to start dictating.

“Depends on who’s going to read it.” Lincoln looks over at Olivia. She’s the only one who’s been over there, the only one knows who they might be able to trust. She considers trying to get a message to Peter and hope he’ll at least have pity, or some sense of misplaced responsibility, but they didn’t part on very good terms. She’s only known the hopeful Peter, the happy Peter… the one who was blinded by her as she abused his trust.

There’s only one person who might be able to help them pull this off anyhow. They can’t afford to bank on somebody else convincing her to help.

“Send it to me. The other me,” she says with more certainty than she feels.

Charlie shift in his seat. “You sure?”

Olivia nods. “Do it. Tell her- “

Charlie puts a hand over hers. “Liv, we got one shot here, and I don’t know her… not her without the brainwashing, but I do know you kiddo. Let me figure out what to say?”

Olivia sits back, looks over at Lincoln who’s just watching them both. “Okay,” she says. “You got one shot Charlie.”

He snorts. “No pressure, huh?”

*  
Waiting is the hardest part. It always is. Olivia finds deskwork frustrating; too much time sitting around waiting. There’s six more disruption incidents, and another, much smaller, quarantine.

Lincoln lets her take the lead on coordinating things from the Command Center. She’s gotten good at it too – she receives the data, sorts through it almost as fast as Astrid does, and spots a pattern to it all. She understands the stakes, knows when to send the quarantine orders and when to risk holding back long enough to give the ground troops time to get as many people out as possible. It takes a bit of the burden off Lincoln.

Truthfully, she looks forward being in the zone when the call comes in. It keeps her from thinking about everything that keeps her up at night. About the answer she’s waiting for.

If she can just hold this world together a little bit longer…

*

Charlie comes through the doors, fresh from another call, all dirty and scraped up. He’s about to say something when Olivia catches Lincoln waving them towards his office.

“Save that thought,” she tells him and gives his sleeve a little pull.

Lincoln hands them each a pad when they take their seats. “So,” he says in his best I’m-in-charge-here voice. “We’ve detected a series of micro-events originating in the Boston area, centering near the old Harvard campus.”

Charlie rubs his face. He’s been out in the field all day and he’s tired. “Micro-events? What the hell are you talking about?”

Lincoln meets his eyes. “Micro-events.” Charlie nods back slowly. The air in the room thickens.

“And you want us to investigate?” Olivia asks. Her stomach does a series of nervous flip-flops. They’ve got their answer and it’s the one she’s been both hoping for, and dreading.

“You got it.” Lincoln points to the pads. “We’ve been able to make some predictions as to when the next event might occur.”

Charlie turns to her. His voice softens. “You sure you’re up for this?” His eyes drop to where her hand is stroking the little nub of a foot that’s stretching her already-snug shirt. “You don’t have to do this. We can find another way.”

She bites her lip and shakes her head. “Charlie,” she says quietly, but she can’t put the rest of it into words. Her throat feels too tight. This isn’t like some custody arrangement; there aren’t going to be any every-other-weekend and two-weeks-in-the-summer visits. Even if that were possible, there isn’t going to be much of a world from him to come back to. Call her selfish, trying to save one life when there are billions on the line, but she hadn’t expected to care so much about her child’s well-being. And yes, ‘her child’; he’d stopped being ‘the package’ a long time ago, despite what she’d been trying to convince herself of. Olivia wouldn’t be doing this otherwise.

“Please don’t try to talk me out of this?”

Charlie nods. Lincoln sits back in his chair and lets out a noisy breath. It’s settled. The date is set.

*  
“Did you bring it?” Olivia asks before the woman even clears the lip of the tan. The ground shakes slightly beneath their feet, then settles again.

Trans-universal crossings aren’t like booking a plane ticket; there’s no fancy board flashing arrival times with the delays blocked in red. She’s paced the length of the lab enough times to have lost count. Enough times that her back hurts and Charlie looks like he’s about to blow a vein if she doesn’t stop moving soon, though he’s too wonderfully understanding to do anything but clench his jaw each time she walks past. Each minute that ticks by is another minute closer to being discovered. Each second is another one closer to losing what’s left of Boston.

The woman nods, shivers a bit as water drips from the ends of her hair, her elbows, and puddles on the concrete floor. She says, “Walter thought a dead cat would be about the right mass.” Olivia’s disgust must be obvious because the other one winces in apology before she says, “So’s this.” She hands over a small, dense package. Coffee beans. “Still not a fair trade.” There’s a sadness to her voice, maybe a bit of pity in there as well.

And then they stand there staring at each other, no guns this time, because really, neither needs the advantage. Olivia watches the other’s eyes settle on her belly, sees her shrink just a little, as if she’s been holding her breath. Waiting for the double-cross that isn’t coming. She’s not sure she would have risked coming if she were in her double’s place.

She wants to say she’s sorry; this isn’t the way things were supposed to turn out. Children are not supposed to be bread as biological weapons, and their mother taught her better than to steal what isn’t hers to take. But she’s seen the other Olivia’s file and sampled her life; the only reason they’re standing here now is because Walter and William Bell saw fit to use that little girl as a soldier, a weapon of their own twisted design. She feels a kinship with this child. This woman knows how easily the best of intentions can go awry when the survival of one’s universes is at stake.

The woman stumbles a bit, but catches herself with a hand on the corner of the tank. She takes a moment to sort out her equilibrium. “This doesn’t get any easier with practice.” It takes her a minute before she opens her eyes again and nods to Olivia. Olivia doesn’t miss how her hands are shaking the whole time.

Charlie wraps a blanket over her shoulders. “Liv,” he gives her a nod and a sad smile full of apologies of his own. “I don’t know how-“

“It’s okay Charlie,” she cuts him off gently as she pulls the blanket around her shoulders. “It’s really good to see you again too.” There’s a warmth there that’s familiar. A friendship that goes deeper than being mere colleagues and partners once upon a time. She’s here because it was Charlie’s words in the message. It reminds Olivia how deeply their lives are now woven and tangled together. One more thing they’re forced to share.

“So I hate to rush you Liv, but if we’re going to do this, we need to get started,” Charlie looks between the both of them and says, “Time’s ticking.” Then under his breath he adds, “God this is weird.”

“Did you bring it?” the other Olivia asks as they pick their way past the sheet-covered contraptions.

Charlie points to the small cooler and the two bags of viscous red fluid. “That going to be enough?”

She holds up the bags and examines the labels. “Let’s hope so.” Olivia watches as she bites her lip. The room is vibrating with all the nervous energy. She watches Charlie unpack the kit as he explains the plan to the other her. The other woman keeps glancing back over her shoulder at Olivia as Charlie shows her what he’ll need her to do.

Olivia rubs at the foot that’s pressing into her ribs with so much force that it feels like the baby is trying to propel himself free. She breathes deeply, slowly, tries to calm her racing heart, but her insides are still clenched and tight, and he seems to be picking up on her stress. ‘I’m sorry kiddo,’ she thinks. And because nobody else can hear, ‘I don’t know how else to do this.’ She’s full of unspoken apologies today.

“Charlie, you sure you know what you’re doing?” the other asks. “What if something goes wrong?”

“Then you take the baby and run,” Olivia says and hopes she sounds decisive. “Cross over if you can. Don’t let the Secretary get his hands on him.”

“What about you?”

Olivia doesn’t have an answer ready. She’s been trying not to dwell on that possibility. She’s touched by her concern, surprised, though really, she shouldn’t be. She knows about the case with Broyles’ son and what this woman did for that kid only hours before her attempted escape. She’s a survivor, but not at the expense of others if she can help it.

“I was a medic when I was stationed overseas,” Charlie breaks in. Olivia’s thankful he’s here to keep them on track. “Liv’ll be fine. Won’t you Liv?” It’s more of a statement.

“Yeah,” she says weakly. “All the latest nanotech here. I’ll be fine.”

The other her nods. “Okay.” She’s not really convinced. “Okay then. Ready when you are.”

She’s not, but time is running short. It has been for a while now. They’re down to the last few grains. She eases herself on to the examining table that’s identical to the one in Walter’s lab, right down to the straps.

Olivia gasps when Charlie’s blade pierces her skin. It hurts more than she’d expected despite the local anesthetic. Charlie hesitates, and that makes it worse. “You sure about this Liv?” His voice wavers and his hand shakes. The blade is just fractions of an inch above her flesh, but she can’t unlock her jaw to tell him to keep going. She will not scream because if she does, Charlie will come undone.

“Do it Charlie,” the other Olivia orders. No room for arguments. She takes Olivia’s hand in hers and squeezes. Hard. Olivia can only nod. They are the same where it counts.

She feels hot tears welling up and her stomach clenches and heaves like she’s just stepped off a carnival ride; the decision to not to use anything that might show up in a toxicology screen later was a stupid one. She squeezes her eyes shut against both, feels somebody wiping the clammy sweat off her forehead with a cloth, hears her whisper, “Come on Dunham. You’re okay. You’re doing fine. You can do this. Almost there.”

And then they are. She hears Charlie’s huff of nervous laughter and opens her eyes. “Hey Liv.” He hands her something warm and slippery wrapped in a towel. “You’ve got yourself a son.”

Olivia hates him for saying those words.

The pain is only a dull burn now. Charlie works quickly with the nano-patches. They’re only supposed to be field dressings, but they’ll keep her from bleeding out and hopefully stave off any infection. They don’t do anything to heal the suddenly gaping hole in her chest that opens up as she nudges aside the edge of the towel. She’s doubtful that there’s any technology in this universe that can.

His eyes are still scrunched closed, his skin is wrinkled and thin, making him look like a tiny old man, and he’s slick with blood, but he’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen. And so not the outcome she’d been expecting of this mission. She sweeps a fingertip along his delicate jaw and he turns his face towards her touch and mewls like a kitten, mouth searching her out by instinct. She feels a little piece of herself die.

Time runs out.

She hears the shrill of the sirens, faint, but moving fast. The baby startles in her arms and her gut tells her to run, get up and get out of here. She wouldn’t get far. She’d already started shivering as her body protests the trauma she’s just put it through.

“There’s one more thing,” Charlie says to the other Olivia as he pulls out his gun. He hands it to her, butt-first, but she’s shaking her head. Olivia watches her drop an empty syringe and go wide-eyed with panic. She shakes her head emphatically no.

“I can’t Charlie. I killed you once. I can’t do it again.”

“I don’t want you to kill me.” Charlie looks at her, confused. He looks back at Olivia. “She’s got to do it. They’re not going to buy this.”

Olivia looks at her counterpart and sees all that courage about to slip. Things are about to unravel. She won’t let it. Not if this woman can save her child. “Give me the gun Charlie.”

“Liv…”

“We’re the same. They won’t be able to tell the prints apart. Give me the gun.”

He does. She kisses her son for the first and last time and hands him gently to her double. She can hear the assault team banging down the barricade they’d made at the building’s front door. She’s feeling light-headed and her vision starts to darken.

“Go,” she tells her. “Tell Peter… “ but the ground is shaking again. Equipment rattles and smashes in a world-ending cacophony that drowns her out. “Go!” She takes aim at Charlie.

He closes his eyes. “Don’t hit anything important,” he tries to joke, but it’s not funny at all. She can barely keep her hand steady. She takes aim for his thigh and hears the door of the tank close behind her.

She fires. Charlie drops. She tosses the gun across the floor.

The lab door crashes open and the world stops trembling.

Lincoln’s in the lead. He starts barking orders and calling for a med team as soon as he’s certain she’s alive and Charlie’s still breathing. He’s doing his best to create noise and confusion. Buying that Olivia a few more precious seconds.

It’s a full three minutes before anybody thinks to check the tank.

The water inside is still.

*

Marilyn is at her bedside when Olivia wakes. Her eyes are red but she smiles anyhow, puts on a brave face for her daughter. Olivia can’t look at her and not feel like the morning they lost her sister all over again.

Or that’s what she tells herself. The dull ache in her chest has nothing to do with Rachel.

“Hey sweetie,” her mother says softly as she brushes the hair off her forehead. “You scared me there.”

“I didn’t mean to,” she mumbles. Her mouth feels cottony from the painkillers. The pain from the incision has been muted for now. She presses her cheek against Marilyn’s hand. Whatever her mother might have said next is interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Olivia,” The Secretary greets her. He’s alone, his regular security detail no doubt waiting in the hallway. “My deepest apologies that we were unable to get a team to you faster. This loss was unacceptable.”

“Thank you Mr. Secretary,” Marilyn answers for her.

He nods to her mother. “I’m sorry for your loss too, Mrs. Dunham.” He’s done his homework. Something hardens inside Olivia. She can see right through his sincerity. She turns her face away so she doesn’t have to take part in this game right now. There will be enough questions later. The Secretary is a shrewd man. He must suspect something.

She feels the air in the room change and opens her eyes to find him staring down at her with none of his initial geniality.

“There are always other ways, Olivia,” he says, then takes his leave. Olivia knows a warning when she hears one. This is not over. When the door closes behind him, Marilyn asks what he meant.

“I don’t know mom,” she whispers.

But she has her fears.

* _  
Olivia Dunham crosses over and takes a son that isn’t hers. The irony is not lost on her. She doesn’t do it out of love, however, for she has never met the child, but out of the certainty that by taking him, she will be saving his life, and by extension, all of theirs._

 _It is not the first strike in the greater war; that line was drawn and crossed a long time ago. This salvo may just bring about the beginning of the end._

 _She stumbles over the edge of the tank. It’s difficult enough to find her feet after each crossing. She’s even more unsteady with the package in her arms._

 _Peter catches her before she falls. He lowers her to the ground and shouts for towels, blankets… anything to wrap her in because she’s shivering so hard. His brow is drawn and he’s angry – she can see it plain as day. He hates the tank and what it does to her, and that’s why she did this when he was supposed to be away. He wasn’t supposed to know she was going over._

 _Walter is hovering and fussing. It feels like minutes before she can stop the shaking enough to unlock her jaw and speak, but surely it couldn’t be that long because the package is still quiet despite all the trauma._

 _Her stomach knots as she pushes back the blanket Peter is draping over her shoulders. She tugs at the tight swaddling, breath held, fingers still shaking. “No… no, no, no… “ She prays this won’t all be for naught._

 _Walter shoves past Peter, who’s crouched beside her, staring at them, confused and useless, not realizing the emergency. “Relax Olivia.” Walter stills her hand with his, and with a patience she cannot afford, loosens the sopping sheet. “The mammalian dive reflex prevents drowning in newborns. You weren’t submerged long enough to do any lasting damage.”_

 _“Wait? Mammalian dive reflex? What the hell is going on here?“ Peter finds his voice. “Walter what did you do to her?”_

 _“It wasn’t Walter.” Her heart rate is slowing, but her muscles will not stop spasming. She pushes the bundle into Peter’s arms. She can’t stop her teeth from chattering._

 _“She said to tell you ‘Find that other way.’”_

 _Peter pulls at the sheet. The tiny, wide-eyed child stares back at him for a moment, indignant, then opens his mouth and cries. Loud and strong. Just before the world goes dark, Olivia remembers to breathe._

 _The balance tips.  
_  
.end


End file.
